EGR Valve on a VW Golf needs fixing

Baxter100

Hello,

I have a 2011 VW Golf. A few weeks ago the little light flashed up on my dashboard saying there was a problem with the engine management system and the car went into safe mode.

I drove the car for a few minutes then turned it off. When I restarted the car the light had gone and for the rest of the drive (30+ minutes) all was fine.

It then happened again the other day so I took the car into the local garage and it was diagnosed as a problem with EGR valve which needed fixing/cleaning. Was quoted £700    The bloke advised it would need fixing at some point although If I did some long drives it may be ok for a while.

Does anyone have any experience of this? Is this in any way linked to the emission problem? I received a letter from VW a month ago advising that the EA 189 Nox emission in the engine needs fixing but haven't been able to book this in yet - is it possible to tie this in with the EGR fix for a cheaper quote? Or am I just sucking it up and getting it fixed for the £700? I've called a couple of other garages and the quotes were similar.

Thanks in advance!

daveyjp

1.6TDi by any chance?  £700 is at the lower end of what it could cost, its a long job as VW decided to put the EGR in a hard to reach place so rather than the half an hour an EGR change can take on some vehicles, it takes most of a day.

Nuggy96

Depends if it is stuck open or not. I have problem with a 11 plate corsa. If you're lucky you can run it on a motorway for 30-45 mins at 3k rpm, and should get rid of any contaminants. If it is stuck, you will probs need it cleaning/replacing. The major part of cost is labour cause it is in a difficult place of the engine, so might as well pay to get a new one for the sake of an extra maybe £100-200 in case cleaning doesn't work. Its a major issue for 2010-2014 diesel cars.

MinuteNoodles

Baxter100 said:

Does anyone have any experience of this? Is this in any way linked to the emission problem?

Absolutely nothing to do with it in any way, shape or form. I'll explain.

What they do to lower emissions on all cars is recirculate some of the exhaust gases back into the engine to get burned for a second time to give a cleaner emission. This is something that's been done in cars for at least 20 years now. What controls the timing and quantity of that gas being recirculated is the EGR valve - EGR = Exhaust Gas Recirculating. A pipe goes from the exhaust system up to the EGR valve which is a valve located in the main air intake path into the engine. Valve opens up and the vacuum effect from the engine sucking in air sucks in the exhaust gases too.

What happens over time is because those exhaust gases contain a bit of soot from time to time plus as your engine ages a bit of oil vapour too, this clogs up the piston on the EGR valve eventually preventing it from opening or closing fully. ECU detects this, throws up fault light on dash.

It is possible to take out the EGR valve, clean it again and all is well with the world. However the majority of the cost of replacing an EGR valve isn't the cost of the valve itself but the labour as often on modern cars they're buried in the engine bay so a load of stuff needs to be removed to get to them. With my wife's van the entire front end of the vehicle has to come off to do it on hers.

Baxter100

Thanks all. £700 (at the least) it is then

And yes is a 1.6TDI.....

Baxter100

jeepjunkie said:

Wifey has a 2010 Golf 1.6TDI. As it had the emissions fix VW replaced the EGR for free. The car had a full VW service history.

This sounds promising.... how much of a fuss did she have to kick up to get the work included with the emissions fix, or did they just offer? I have a full service history, but not all from a main VW garage.